Sunday, May 22, 2011

A late night burglary in a Bangladeshi village sparks off a day of riotingas the law'n'order situation is turned upside down...

Kaharol, Dinajpur - north-western Bangladesh; in the early hours ofTuesday morning (3rd May) a house burglary occurred in a village in thefar north of the country. Dr Rajendranath Devnath, owner of the house,discovered the group of masked robbers at 1.30 am;

“Hearing the sound of breaking the front door, I rushed out of my roomto see what was happening. Without saying anything, the intruders hitme with sharp weapons,”

After stabbing the doctor, the robbers also attacked another family memberbefore leaving with Taka 3 Lakh (around £2,500/€2,750/$4,100), some goldornaments and several mobile phones.

Hearing cries for help, nearby villagers were alerted to the incident andgathered to try to stop the robbers making their getaway in a whitemicrobus. The robbers responded by throwing Molotov cocktails and firingat the crowd before driving away.

As the crowd grew, they began chasing the microbus and eventually caughtit by blocking the road at nearby Boleya Bazaar. The robbers, now trappedand surrounded, then introduced themselves to the angry crowd - as policeofficers of nearby Birganj station. The furious crowd now beat up the fivecops and then locked them in a nearby building.

Responding to a call by mobile from the detainees, later in the morningtwo senior policemen - one a Deputy Commissioner - arrived to insist onthe release of the detained cops. Quickly surrounded by an angry mob ofthousands, they were chased away under a volley of stones.

Later a larger detachment of eight police attempted to free theircolleagues. Firing rubber bullets, a pitched battle began as villagersreplied with more volleys of stones. Overwhelmed by force of numbers,these police were also captured and confined in the same room as theircolleagues. Abandoned police vehicles were torched.

The level of anger reflected the long frustrations of villagers - as onelocal explained;

'It is an outburst of the locals against continuous harassment ofpeople by the police and frequent robberies in the area.' (New Age - 4May 2011)

An earlier incident meant locals were also already suspicious of widerpolice involvement in the rise in robberies;

On March 8, villagers attacked a robber while he was leaving afterrobbery in Doptoir village of Biral upazila. The robber was laterfound to be a policeman of the upazila. (Daily Star - 4 May 2011)

(Upazilas are county sub-districts.) The villagers had suffered reprisalin March; "The next day ... two platoon riot police baton-charged thevillagers for attacking the policeman." The following day a regionalsenior officer arrived and "begged apology to the villagers for theatrocities". (bdosintmonitors.blogspot.com) This suggests the regionalpolice command have long been aware of and concerned at the unrestprovoked by local police corruption in the area.

As clashes continued through Tuesday the unrest spread over a wider area.Villagers from Birganj and Kaharol marched in protest to their localpolice stations and laid siege to them. By 1.30pm Birganj station was onfire, along with several police vehicles. Police repeatedly fired roundsof rubber bullets to disperse the crowd. One person was hit by a vehicleand died while 30 others were injured during the clashes, including threepolice; one cop is in a critical condition.

The station OC (officer-in-charge/stationmaster) and other officers wereforced by the mob to remove their uniforms and close the stations. Someofficers fled, leaving behind vans and two rifles.

The locals had their own ideas about 'justice';

The villagers shouted slogans against the OC of Birganj accusing himof being the ‘mastermind’ behind all robberies in the area anddemanding that he should be handed over to the locals for trial in the‘people’s court’. [...] ‘Locals alleged that police were involved in the robbery which Icannot confirm at the moment. But we have taken the allegationseriously,’ Dinajpur deputy commission Jamal Uddin told New Age. (NewAge - 4 May 2011)

Two platoons of paramilitary Border Guard(1) forces were rushed to thearea and the 13 imprisoned cops were eventually freed after villagerssecured a promise of an investigation into the robberies and action beingtaken against the guilty officers. Several officers have now beensuspended - including the OCs of both Birganj and Kaharol stations - andsome are apparently in custody (perhaps as much for their own protectionas any other reason).

The police Criminal Investigation Department have begun theirinvestigation and are quoted as being "suspicious" regarding the role oflocal police in the events. One issue is why Birganj police, in the middleof the night and in plainclothes, were at the time of the robberypatrolling an area under the jurisdiction of Kaharol police.

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